New Yorker Watchmen Review *Minor Spoilers*

The New Yorker has a very unflattering review of the movie. Not to say that this is necessarily a film that will appeal to the art crowd, but it does bring up some disturbing points for me. I was a fan of the original graphic novel, which I read back in the 80's as it was originally published so I know the story but I don't want this thread to contain too many specific movie or plot references for those who do not want to know about them.

I'm not surprised by that review. I fear I may agree with much of it, but reserve judgment until I see the film. It's little consolation that the seven critics at Metacritic have been about as unkind to the film, though.

Ah you gotta be born with your head stuck straight between your butt cheeks to even be considered for a job at the New Yorker. Like I care what that pretentious hack thinks. I may not have seen the movie but even if it's bad it doesn't deserve a review that hoity toity. I can't think of any movie that does.

“Watchmen,” like “V for Vendetta,” harbors ambitions of political satire, and, to be fair, it should meet the needs of any leering nineteen-year-old who believes that America is ruled by the military-industrial complex, and whose deepest fear—deeper even than that of meeting a woman who requests intelligent conversation—is that the Warren Commission may have been right all along.

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What the fuck? Like really?
We're all assholes who think women are best found in porn magazines? I know reviews are supposed to be opinion, but could this line have worked if it was some other group?

"Sex and the City" harbors ambitions of political satire, and, to be fair, it should meet the needs of any 30 year old woman who believes Prada will solve all her problems and, whose deepest fear - deeper even than that of missing a sale at Louis Vutton - is that their fourty-thousand dollar wedding gown might be ruined on her wedding day.

I'm not reading the review, but I've feared all along that this will suck. It just looks stupid to me in a Batman Returns kind of way...I don't know. I guess if they are lampooning superhero movies instead of superhero comics I "get" that but I just don't give a shit.

The Watchmen movie needs to be serious, like a 9 hour miniseries, and Nite Owl needs to be a fat, balding, impotent, sorry older guy...not some dude that is kicking ass matrix style, like in that clip.

I'm not reading the review, but I've feared all along that this will suck. It just looks stupid to me in a Batman Returns kind of way...I don't know. I guess if they are lampooning superhero movies instead of superhero comics I "get" that but I just don't give a shit.

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What gave you the impression that this is "lampooning" anything? All I've read and seen suggests that it's a very faithful, very serious, hard R-rated adaptation of the original Moore/Gibbons comic miniseries. True, the comic was itself a deconstruction of superhero tropes, and there was no doubt some humor in that, but it was hardly a comedy.

The reviewer seems pretentious and elitist. Granted, there are many pretentious and elitist people out there who will agree with him, and will dislike the movie. Maybe I'm not high brow because I like graphic novels and superheroes, but this movie just looks cool to me.

I've been checking several respected reviewers on the film and yes, The New Yorker's shows plainly that he doesn't understand the original medium or story, so it's unlikely he's going to get the movie.

However, several reviewers who do plainly understand the book are remarking that the film is slavish to the point of creating a faithful but lifeless adaptation. Which is a drag.

From Nick Setchfield at SFX magazine:
"Critically, Watchmen dissected comics in the unique vocabulary of the funnybooks. A celluloid version needed to be just as playful with cinema, interrogating the cliches and tropes of screen crusaders – everything from the high-camp riot of ‘60s Batman to the darkly tinged X-Men movies. But while Snyder adds fashionably overwrought sound FX to the combat sequences (and his slo-mo, sped-up action tic soon gets annoying) they feel misjudged....

It’s not a bad film. It’s actually coldly, technically brilliant. And it honours Moore and Gibbons only too well. But it’s monumental and slab-like, an exercise in cinematic taxidermy, in need of a lightning strike to animate its parts....

Ultimately you’re left feeling like Billy Crudup’s wan Dr Manhattan, witnessing a supernova from afar – yes, it’s a spectacle, it’s worthy of a polite smattering of applause, but somehow you’re too distant and detached to care. This is an easy film to admire, a crushingly hard film to love."

A great adaptation requires so much more than the misguided attempt to simply transfer something from one medium to another.

From Devin Gordon's Newsweek review - a very good point:

"Only a few filmmakers have struck a balance. "The Godfather" was a bestseller, but for the screen version, director Francis Ford Coppola bravely rearranged nearly all of its furniture, building a bit character's wedding into a massive set piece at the start of his film and, for the climax, intercutting a solemn baptism with a string of brutal Mafia hits. More recently, the "Harry Potter" movies didn't get it right until the third try, when Alfonso Cuarón turned Hogwarts into a magically grungy, bluish dungeon populated with disaffected adolescents in blue jeans. Comic-book and fantasy adaptations are now a dime a dozen, but they tend to work best—see Christopher Nolan and Batman—when they are spiritual, rather than literal, transfusions. The apotheosis, surely, is Peter Jackson's "Lord of the Rings" trilogy, which stands shoulder to shoulder with Tolkien's books. What separates Jackson and Snyder isn't the depth of their love for the material. It's that Jackson was merciless about it when he had to be."

I'll still go see it, and then I'll reread the book which I haven't picked up in probably 20 years. It'll be interesting to see if the book holds up, or if it is either too attached to the particular paranoias of the 80s, or the particular paranoias of being 20. Maybe there is something timeless about it, and it's surely a good yarn. I look forward to finding out.

“Watchmen,” like “V for Vendetta,” harbors ambitions of political satire, and, to be fair, it should meet the needs of any leering nineteen-year-old who believes that America is ruled by the military-industrial complex, and whose deepest fear—deeper even than that of meeting a woman who requests intelligent conversation—is that the Warren Commission may have been right all along.